Alfred Edward Woodley Mason
A.E.W. Mason (1865-1948) is probably best known now as the author of The Four Feathers (1902) a story of courage conquering fear, duty, redemption and sacrifice in the face of military action which has been adapted six times for the big screen, twice during the silent era. Set in the 1890s it is about a British military campaign in the Sudan. Aficionados of detective fiction will know him as the British author of a detective story, At the Villa Rose (1910).
Renown in his lifetime for his naval career and as a spymaster in the Naval Intelligence Division in World War 1, Mason started out in the theatre, acting for Oxford University Dramatic Society and then going on the London stage in the 1880s. His time in front of live audiences led him to favour oral storytelling which coloured his views on the quality of recorded retellings.
After Mason became a writer, his poor experience of having his stories adapted for film lead him to try his own hand at adaptation. He made public comments on the industry and the future of British films.
Right. Photograph from the lost film based on Mason’s story, The Winding Stair (1925)
Fire Over England (1936)
Mason’s historical novel is a commentary on the tension between personal and public loyalties strained by the forces at play in Europe in 1936. His intrepid hero Robin Aubrey seeks revenge for his father who is apparently lost in Spain but in fact is spying for Walsingham.
Clemence Dane’s adaptation of Mason’s novel for the screen gave Flora Robson a rounded character as the politically savvy and commanding Virgin Queen whose public face has had to subsume her private desires.